May Day Protests and Chinese Attack Strategies

A lot has been written on the run up to the May Day demonstrations planned for cities all across the U.S. Fox News reported yesterday morning that over 600 groups, collectively the beneficiaries of nearly $2 billion in annual revenues, were planning to take over the streets on behalf of a socialist and anti-American agenda. At the behest of teachers unions, multiple public school systems, including the massive Chicago system, were cancelling classes and encouraging students to participate.

The numbers are not yet in this morning, and, as usual, the promoters are prone to exaggeration, but it’s safe to say that it’s been a strong turnout, not just numerically, but in terms of the media interest — which, of course, is what matters most to the organizers. But we already know that it’s been big, and it has generated huge volumes of heated, very ugly leftist rhetoric.

It’s significant that the organizers mobilized a broad swath of the Left, including communists of every stripe and socialists who continue the pretense of not being communist, above all the so-called “Democratic Socialists” now busily ensconcing themselves among the Democrats. But it’s not just the hard core radicals, since evidently significant numbers of ordinary Democrats have succumbed to this, in much the same manner as they fell for the “No Kings” agitation.

Not that this is in any way surprising. The party of Tip O’Neill and Scoop Jackson, the party of John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson is now, overwhelmingly the party of mindless, angry radicalism, epitomized by Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, Ilhan Omar, and AOC. Predictably, the headliner at the New York City May Day protest was none other than Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took it as an occasion to celebrate once again the most radically leftist elements of his program.

What we need to understand, however, is that whether useful idiots, mindless patsies, or dedicated hard-core radicals, this demonstration serves above all as a trial run for what we’ll experience in the event that we find ourselves in a direct confrontation with China, whether an invasion of Taiwan — and Xi still promises such a “resolution” for 2027 — or around any of a number of other flashpoints. The connections between China’s overall geopolitical situation and these kind of demonstrations deserve careful exploration.

First, the geopolitical situation today, and its impact on Chinese global strategy. Trump’s recent actions in Venezuela and Iran served as setbacks for China’s international agenda. These actions demonstrate that, when the U.S. chooses to act with resolution, China is unable to offer meaningful protection for its client states, not diplomatically, not militarily. The latter has been particularly important, since in both cases high-end Chinese weapons systems proved no match for American capabilities.

China’s economic leverage is also dissipating rapidly, partly from the immediate pressure from disruption of oil markets, but above all because the sclerotic central planning of the communist economy is now on full display, with multiple decades of socialist economic planning miscalculations now coming home to roost.

So Xi’s dream of replacing the U.S. at the head of the world order would appear to be turning into a nightmare. The People’s Liberation Army’s confidence in its ability to dominate even its own backyard in the event of an armed confrontation must surely have been shaken by the events of the last few months. The Chinese Communist Party’s headlong march from strength-to-strength no longer seems assured, as the U.S. asserts its political, military, and economic capabilities and old foes, notably Japan, are now adopting a more energetic posture in response to potential Chinese threats.

But amidst this developing nightmare scenario, China retains a carefully developed capability, one which if exercised to the fullest could well negate each and every advantage enjoyed by the U.S. For years now, the Chinese have carefully cultivated influence networks within the U.S., sometimes openly, sometimes covertly, but all with an obvious dual purpose. In the near term, short of direct confrontation, do everything possible to sow division and dismay within the American body politic.

In the long-term, if war should come, China wants to have capabilities in place to turn Americans violently against themselves, leading, if not to all out civil war, then to the daily drumbeat of protests and demonstrations sympathetic to China, to violence as needed to roil our cities or break our critical infrastructure from within, to angry political division that paralyzes any hope of a coherent military response. This comes on top of widely-suspected Chinese activities designed to insert special operators and espionage agents into the U.S. as sleepers, a process accelerated during the Biden open border years.

They’ve been preparing this for a long time, as evidenced by the increasingly prominent role taken by tech billionaire Neville Roy Singham, now resident in Shanghai and very clearly acting on China’s behalf as he pours money into demonstrations such as those taking place today. And he is far from alone. The pretense that these are “spontaneous” responses by ordinary people is patently nonsensical. We’ve witnessed at every turn the guiding hand of external influence, whether from Iran in the wake of October 7, from Russia, and, of course, from China. Yesterday’s May Day protests in New York benefited directly from funding and organizational support by several Singham connected groups. In yesterday’s events, we can see how short the line has become between Singham and the likes of Mamdani and the other Democratic Socialists.

The Singham connection goes back a number of years. Last year it became the focus of a 2025 House Oversight Committee task force investigating a link  between what Singham himself has described as the “Singham Network” and previous riots in Los Angeles. The committee, in additional correspondence with then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, noted that Singham was the “main backer behind the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which has organized nationwide protests, including the Los Angeles riots.” The committee further noted that Singham has a long track record of assisting far left entities … that oppose U.S. interests and support U.S. adversaries.” Finally, the committee drew attention to Singham’s “elaborate dark money network.”

In addition, the committee cited — of all things — New York Times reporting that documented hundreds of millions of dollars to far-left groups, that, in the words of the committee, “engage in division, disruption, and violence to advance Chinese government propaganda at the expense of U.S. interests.” Not least among these efforts is the exploitation of demonstrations and protests, not only to convince the world that the U.S. is a declining power, unworthy of support. But the protests also directly promote discord within the U.S. itself.

All of this serves the interests of China, which has a direct and obvious stake in undermining the U.S. and, in particular, the Trump Administration. Moreover, it beggars belief to think that Singham, based in China and a loud proponent of not simply Chinese communism, but a hard-core Maoism, performs his multifarious activities without the encouragement and support of the government in Beijing. This isn’t just the political expression of a disaffected American billionaire. As the congressional investigators clearly believe, this is someone acting as the agent of a hostile power.

I made just such a scenario the centerpiece of my last novel, The Zebras from Minsk, which revolved around a race against time to thwart a joint Chinese and Russian plot to destabilize the U.S. by attacking critical infrastructure and fomenting political division. At the center of the threat stood an expatriate American billionaire serving as the agent of this foreign aggression.

The novel, of course, is fiction, and the billionaire a confection of various anti-American types, seasoned with a nod in the direction of the late Jeffrey Epstein. But as many readers have noted, the fiction is rooted in serious research and reflects a credible threat, one made evident in dozens of subversive actions, great and small, over the last few years.

No matter how hard the proponents try to conceal it, we’ve repeatedly seen the hidden hands of foreign and domestic radical influence orchestrating leftist protests in the last few years. That, emphatically, is not fiction. What we’re seeing today, massively funded and carefully coordinated, is a perfect example of a first wave influence operation, not yet in support of open warfare waged against us from abroad, but very much subversive of the U.S.

There are, of course, the idealistic dupes, the “useful idiots,” the easily influenced and willfully blind, all of whom turn out for these events. One might adduce Trump Derangement Syndrome as a contributing factor, but tying these developments to Trump deceives us of their larger purpose. Trump, after all, is only the latest in a long line of conservative leaders who’ve been demonized by the left.

The difference is that this demonization has been weaponized by well-funded and well-organized agitators, the Saul Alinsky-schooled “community organizers,” but also a whole generation of radicals who’ve taken Che and Mao as their models. They’ve taken over the teacher’s unions, they’ve taken over the journalism and entertainment establishments, and they have normalized anti-Americanism among the indoctrinated “sheep” who supported President Auto-Pen and his designated successor, the “cackler,” even as this twosome presided over our country’s disastrous decline.

It’s easy, then, to dismiss foreign influence, when our homegrown elites have done such a thorough job of doing this country down. But make no mistake. The Chinese understand a fertile environment when they see it, and they will do everything possible to take advantage of it. And from his protected base in Shanghai, Neville Roy Singham unapologetically positions himself as the godfather of the hard left in the United States.

Consider today’s May Day demonstrations to be a trial run, even as so many other demonstrations over the last several years have obviously served to advance foreign interests and undermine U.S. policy. Take a moment to consider the larger implications. Reflect not only on what takes place, but what it could mean in a darker future context. Instead of viewing this as simply a domestic political event, another in an increasingly common series of noisome leftist protests, view it as a potential harbinger of things to come.

It’s time to shed our complacency about these things. It’s time to wake up to the possibilities and steel ourselves against this growing threat. We need to wake up — Chairman Xi’s 2027 deadline is right around the corner.

READ MORE from James H. McGee:

The Hypocrisy of the ‘Hate Has No Home Here’ Contingent

The Long Road Ahead for Virginia

Gerrymandering and the Tyranny of Big Cities

James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a nuclear security and counter-terrorism professional. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His most recent novel, The Zebras from Minsk, was featured among National Review’s favorite books in 2025.  You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and its predecessor, Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.